ABSTRACT
This understanding of topoi defines a present critical usage which has developed from a more restricted meaning originating in classical rhetoric with Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. For Cicero, the topoi were perspectives, points of view from which any subject might be considered productively. Those he lists in De topica-including definition, partition, etymology, conjugation, genus, and species-are barren of specific content (18.71). He writes, ‘if we wish to track down some argument, we ought to know the places: for that is the name given by Aristotle to the “regions” [L sedes], as it were, from which arguments are drawn. Accordingly, we may define a topic as the region of an argument’ (2.7). Considering such loci communes (commonplaces) would help an orator to think of what might be said about a subject. To Cicero, the places were common because either side might use them in arguing a legal case.
